Only a small minority in
the United States maintains an unwavering faith in the administration
of George W. Bush. Most of the country has finally discovered Bush and
his ilk are liars, thieves, incompetent hacks, and mercenary madmen. Only
a few true believers remain. These few are reflected in the unwavering
statistical minority of 30%-33%, who still support Bush, and apparently
will support Bush, no matter what he does. This remnant, or as Steven
Colbert called them, "the backwash," will never sway. Like the
Christian martyrs of old, they will go to their deaths swearing allegiance
to their master. One might wonder who this faithful remnant is, and just
where its members might be found. Well, a narrow and vociferous margin
can be found screeching on Freerepublic.com.
There, they are apparently alive, but judging from what they hold to be
'reality,' not so well.

On Freerepublic.com, we
find those who still believe in the Bush agenda: the war, the insurgency,
the domestic agenda, and yes, even in the reliability of the Bush propaganda
machine. Here we find the few who find no irony in the language of the
Bush regime. They see nothing ironic about the fact that the original
name for the war in Iraq was Operation Iraqi Liberation, the acronym for
which is O.I.L.--that is, before it was changed to cover up the inauspicious
and inadvertent revelation of its
true purpose. They see no irony in the idea of liberating a country
from a dictator, and then using his former prisons to torture its citizens.
They see no irony in calling the 'enemy' ruthless killers, even as they
have bombed and ruthlessly killed many times more people than the enemy.
They see no irony in trumpeting a war against terrorism, even as their
state terrorism has precipitated a bloody civil war that has drastically
added to terrorism's ranks. They see no irony in the fact that they no
longer know who the enemy is, and instead hope to secure the enemy from
the enemy's enemy. They see no irony in the administration's demands that
Iran not "interfere" in the affairs of Iraq. They see no tragedy
in the report
that over 2 million former Iraqis are now refugees in nearby countries
and another 2 million are now homeless inside Iraq. They see no irony
in the fact that Bush
now claims a need to stay in Iraq, lest it become the safe-haven for
terrorism that he claimed it was before he attacked, but which it has
only become since he attacked. They see no irony in decrying the supposedly
undemocratic regimes in Venezuela and elsewhere, even as their own elections
have been notoriously and egregiously flawed, indeed probably rigged,
so much so that human rights watch groups would refuse to monitor them.
They see no irony in their "pro-life" agenda, even as they kill
tens of thousands of innocent, walking and talking children and adults.
They see no irony in the fact that the latest media spokesman for the
regime is named "Tony Snow," as if an admission that the message
delivered will be part of a "Snow job."

No, their belief in Bush
persists, despite so much evidence to contradict it. The supernatural
basis of this faith is the key to its persistence. Like Panglossian believers
against contrary evidence, they retain faith in a political ideology that
they imagine to be flawless, regardless of its increasingly deleterious
emanations. And what do they say to anyone, especially anyone with a message
and the determination to voice it, who disagrees? Here, they do not act
so much like the good-natured Pangloss.

For one, they attack the
credibility of anyone who attacks their fearless leader. I myself have
been a recent target of their vituperative denunciations, which, if they
weren't so vitriolic and suggestive of violence, would be hilarious for
their sheer boorishness and desperate flailing. They claim, erroneously,
that I am not a real Ph.D., or that I am not a real professor of English.
To prove this, they cite outdated documents showing me to be a Post-Doctoral
fellow (which requires a Ph.D., incidentally), much like their leader's
use of outdated intelligence in the run-up to war. Little do they know
that I have moved on from Carnegie Mellon University, where I worked as
an editor for the Robotics Institute and a Post-doctoral Fellow for the
English Department, and now hold a tenure-track position as an Assistant
Professor, somewhere in the Carolinas? I say "somewhere in the Carolinas,"
because the Freerepublic.com site is rife with criminally-minded cyber-thugs
with the ethics of their leader. They are domestic terrorists who would
stop at nothing to ruin the opposition. If it weren't for the fact that
the government is being run by like-minded criminal thugs, their threats
would surely lead to investigations. To date, I have received dozens of
death threats and other cowardly missives of warning. My previous address
has been published, as has a list of my referees. Their tactics are infamous
and their ethics deplorable. And they call me the fascist.

Meanwhile, I argued that
for reasons that have become apparent, contemporary Republicanism is now
a dangerous ideology that threatens the well-being of the planet. In this
sense, I compared it to other dangerous political ideologies that should
not be sanctioned under the liberal terms of 'tolerance,' such as Nazism
and the white supremacist KKK. I cited
the well-known Frankfurt School theorist, Herbert Marcuse, in support
of my point. A poster on Freerepublic.com suggested that I'd never read
the essay by Marcuse, or Marcuse's other writings, at all. That would
be anomalous, since I studied the Frankfurt School in great depth in graduate
school, received an A in seminars, and included the Frankfurt School on
my Ph.D. thesis exam. I also suggested that Bush and Cheney and other
operatives in the war, as war criminals, belong in jail. Two days after
I made this statement, an official of the International Criminal Court
declared
that he could envisage circumstances under which Blair and Bush could
be brought before the court and tried for the coalition war crimes in
Iraq. The email replies from "freepers" included attacks for
my lack of concern over national sovereignty. To this charge, I plead
guilty; national sovereignty should never be used to protect convicted
or convictable war criminals. (Yes, my use of the semi-colon is proper
here, as before.) Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. I do
not respect its protection of the scoundrel, nor do I share the fanatical
freeper concern about the black helicopters and the "evil" U.N.
(Many months ago, I suggested on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country"
that Bush's reason for eschewing the ICC was indeed because he knew that
he could later be convicted for war crimes that he was soon about to commit).

After the publication of
my "10-Points"
article, freepers (irrelevantly) questioned my sexual preferences ("I
bet this guy is gay"), attacked my grammar (especially ironic coming
from the 'is-my-children-learning' rightwing), and raised doubts (in their
minds) about my academic credentials. My fathering of three children and
living with a beautiful dancer and choreographer (a woman) should put
the questions about my sexual preferences to rest, as if such preferences
mattered. Apparently they do to the freepers. Sorry, boys. Incidentally,
these doubts were raised in connection to my teaching of 'feminism,' which
these boors equate with femininity. They assume that anyone who studies
feminism is either lesbian or gay. I suppose that all the first-wave suffragettes
were lesbians as well. If so, the women amongst their contingent owe a
great debt to lesbianism.

As to my academic credentials,
earning a Ph.D. from a top twenty-five-ranked, internationally renowned
university apparently disqualifies me for the freepers. Writing and publishing
dozens of articles for the Robotics Institute's Artificial Intelligence
Lab also somehow disqualifies me in their minds. Some have even likened
Robotics itself to idiocy. Meanwhile, I would take the artificial intelligence
of software robots to the so-called natural intelligence of the freeper,
any day. Freepers prefer anything to education, especially Liberal Arts
and Humanities education. When they hear the word "culture,"
they reach for their guns. Sound familiar?
They attack anyone who can claim credentials beyond huckstering corporate
garbage. It is not an accident that "liberal" and "education"
are often juxtaposed.

The freepers suggest that
in a subsequent Rec
Report, I have 'backtracked' from my original "10-Point
Plan," because I am afraid that my having written it will somehow
disqualify me from getting tenure. This charge is actually charmingly
naïve. But, I should like to educate the Busheviks about something
called "academic freedom," which, unlike the freedumb (freedom
to be dumb) avowed on Freerepublic.com, actually allows one to have a
reasoned opinion that differs from that of the king-and-priest mob that
stones dissenters. The reactionary mob has always been uneducated. This
same kind of mob, incited by his sympathy for the French Revolution, burned
down the house of English chemist and thinker, Joseph Priestly. This
kind of mob included spies for the forces of oppression in England and
elsewhere, finding "infidels," "traitors" and "blasphemers"
under every rock in the early 19th century. This same kind of mob has
always opposed those who challenge the dominance of the few. This kind
of mob has always been for reforms that have favored themselves-only if
said reforms happened sometime in the past. This cowardly kind of mob
reveres power and loathes future reform or change. They respond to contemporary
'radicals' as if they were devils, and meanwhile benefit from past radicals.
This same kind of mob would have supported another idiot king named "George"
against the revolutionary forces. In short, this same kind of mob has
always worked against the best self-interests of its own individual members.

This same mob is a dangerous
cabal with members that include dangerous, prominent politicians. I maintain
that today, with critical worldwide issues at stake, their
ideology is a serious bane to society and is prejudicial to the interests
of a vast planetary majority. When I said that Republicans should
be 'thrown in jail,' I referred only to those convicted of actual crimes.
The fear on their part is that many are guilty. This includes Bush and
Cheney, for starters, but also any other officials knowingly complicit
in war crimes and other offenses, such as outing an undercover CIA agent.
As for the low-level mobsters on Freerepublic.com, many should be tracked
down by the police for any harassment, threats or actions taken to destroy
others. They have proven my point every day since the 10-point plan was
posted.